CENTURIA II · QUATRAIN LXX
The Stone in the Tree
Le dard du ciel fera son estendre,
Mors en parlant: grande execution.
Le pierre en l'arbre la fiere gent rendue,
Bruit humain monstre purge expiration.
The dart from the sky will make its extension,
deaths while speaking: great execution.
The stone in the tree, the proud nation brought back,
human noise, monster, purge expiation.
THE MASTER SAYS…
This quatrain concerns the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The dart rushing through the heavens is the plane that carried the bomb, which is represented by the stone in the tree. The great nation that will be defeated is Japan, since the empire was completely knocked out. Because of this, they considered US President Truman a monster and believed that his representative, General MacArthur, was also a monster. But when they realized that he respected the Japanese people and their traditions, they decided that he was not such a monster after all. “The stone in the tree.” He uses the image of a tree because the symbol of the Japanese empire, as well as one of the symbols of Tokyo, is the rising sun behind a tree. Therefore, the stone in the tree is a symbol of the bomb dropped on Japan, which is connected with the symbolism in their language. Their translation points to Napoleon. He dedicated quite a few quatrains to Napoleon, and other quatrains also concern him, but this quatrain does not.